How common is that (outside of academia maybe -- which I have little familiarity with)? Certainly when I've been on conference committees we tended to know a l

How common is that (outside of academia maybe -- which I have little familiarity with)? Certainly when I've been on conference committees we tended to know a lot of the presenters and wouldn't have wanted to just rely on submissions. We knew who were experts on specific topics or were just good presenters.